Art Wall

 

Gaslighting

The one thing that completely does my head in is gaslighting. I didn't even know there was a word for it until about six or seven years ago and as soon as I heard the definition of the word, I had something to explain several relationships that I've had in my life. Crystal clear.

Whenever you come across something in a person that you don't understand, you normally try to think yourself into their situation, see things from their perspective, and get some sort of idea about how they feel and why they behave in a certain way. Gaslighting, I can't understand at all: does the person know they are doing it, and they simply don't care? Is it deliberate? Or are they fooling themselves, as much as they are trying to convince other people?

Somewhat like Sherlock and his three-pipe problems, I try to sort things out in my head but by walking rather than smoking pipes. Since September there have been a number of five mile problems, at least one six-miler, and quite a lot of three-milers as I try to work it all out. I still can't fathom why people do it, although I have tried to stretch my mind to the sky and beyond. I had therapy once, and felt that I'd been taught to tidy difficult things on to shelves in my head. The most recent gaslighting episode is going to have to go into one of those cupboards, although it's monstrously large and it will be difficult to shut the cupboard door on it. I'm trying, though.

From Kevin Younger's Girls v Boys Night

 

The Oak and the Wheat

 

Diamonds

Many years ago through the dark mists of time, I got engaged. The engagement ring was a little Georgian ring with random diamonds set into silver foil to make them sparkle. It was bought one misty dawn from a nice lady at a stall in Caledonian Market in Bermondsey; it was delicate and discreet and looked fine on my bony fingers.

A few months later I was working as a cleaner for an agency, and one of my jobs was to clean a house where elders with learning difficulties lived. It was a gentle house, and comical in its way. When I vacuumed the living room, the line of old people on the sofa lifted their legs in the air in perfect synchronisation so that I could clean under their feet. They had their own chef and I was allowed to eat lunch with the staff around a formica table in the kitchen. It was curry, since you ask. It was nice.

It was a whole day's cleaning, and alas when I got home three or four of the tiny diamonds were missing from the engagement ring. They were replaced by a jeweller, but they were set without foil behind them so they look different to the others: they shine yellowish and the others shine silver. The thing is, it's all the more beautiful for being imperfect.

The marriage came and went and the ring is in a box waiting to be given to one of my daughters at some time in the future. It has it's own honourable history now, added to the life it had before it became mine.

'Underland' by Robert McFarlane

Unexpectedly I fell ill last week, and I'm drugged up with antibiotics and don't feel like singing or playing, which is unusual for me at the moment.

I have been reading this book sporadically for a few weeks and it's been a godsend during today's inertia. There are some irritating things: the friends all have very posh names and unlimited sources of money (ho hum) and there's a tendency to over-use the word 'glittering', but who am I to criticise when the general drift of the book is so intriguing? The author exposes all things underground- deep underground- encountering extensive mining networks, space exploration stations (yes!), cave paintings, human debris (abandoned boats and so on), makeshift prisons, and most importantly, atmospheres. He describes the feeling of underground air, the sensitivity of deep airflow, and spiritual changes that happen when you are at the mercy of the realisation that our time on earth is a mere nano-tangent in the greater scheme of things.

I hate being underground so I'm delighted that Robert McFarlane has explored this part of planet Earth on my behalf. With explorer's gusto, he approaches every subterranean adventure with fresh eyes and the occasional aside and acknowledgement of other explorers in the field, both past and present. He does not ignore women explorers, though his in-person bonding is usually with men (I know such men, and I'm glad it's McFarlane who engages with them and not me).

You could say that explorers do as much to endanger our fragile environment as those liner-loads of cruising tourists, and I couldn't disagree with you. I wanted to visit some of these places just because they are hidden; not the tunnels and caves, but the wonderful parts of the world that are described so beautifully in all their natural glory. Scrubby mountains, dwarf trees, hovering birds, insects and more all casually acknowledge and then ignore the trespassing human and his backpack. The weather, too, is a complete star, sandwiching this overland trekking chap between rough terrains with sometimes merciless beatings.

Imprisoned by a combination of Lockdown Two, drug-fuelled sleepiness and drizzle outside the window, this book is a fantastic escape for the head, not least for its putting of contemporary toxic politics exactly into its small-minded place. Mountains, caves, plateaux: rock on!

'Moths' from the 'Miniatures' Album

 This album will be released next year and features more than 100 musicians.

This has just been released today:

Punks and Friends

 This book will be out shortly, proceeds to NHS.

https://hopecollectiveireland.com/2020/10/27/great-gig-memories-from-punks-and-friends/

There Be Witches

 On yesterday's walk, through the witches' woods (conifers, yews and soundless leaf mould), there were twisted paths of a new sort of fungus trailing away into the distance: big jumbled clumps of pale-brown saucer-sized discs leading the babes in the woods deeper into the gloom. Where the deciduous trees had lost leaves and let sunlight into the copses, the darkness still pervaded in the scary columnar turns of the evergreens.

A tipped up trunk drew us over, roots scrabbling the still air like devil's horns. A tiny gate had been made, and on the lees-de of two of the surrounding trees, little bad-fairy houses had been constructed,  probably 'drops' for evil spells and incantations.

Bandcamp Friday

 It's Bandcamp Friday today, and here's my page URL which has some releases that are now digital only and not available from my website. Click on the link below for more details:

http://helenmccookerybook.bandcamp.com

Voting For Scarecrows

Sitting watching the USA election results being reported, I was astonished by the fact that the Latino population in Florida came out to support the man who half-built a wall to keep Mexicans out of the USA. A privileged old white man has set people against each other as a form of sport, and they have voted for more of it.

Then I thought about us. We (if we are a society of interlinked people and not a fractured bunch of self-seeking idiots) voted for a known liar, an opportunist, a racist, and a man who has brought six children into the world, betrayed their mothers and then deserted both the children and their mothers. All wrapped up in one disgusting package. He has squandered our money (if we pay tax, which I do) by giving it away to incompetent friends of his to set up companies form scratch to test for a deadly pandemic, after the pandemic has already taken hold, and when the expertise was already there in the public sector. And yet he has refused to give public money to feed children who by the end of the year will be not only physically malnourished but also educationally and spiritually so.

What is wrong with the human race? Is it fear, hatred, spite... a mixture of those things? I honestly could not have invented two such men in my wildest dreams.

I begin to think that there is a form of double gaslighting going on- giving and receiving. These awful scarecrows tell us lies, and we believe them because we want that subservience: it stops us form needing to think for ourselves.

Meanwhile, the stress of my own life has taken it's toll. Like everyone, I have a complex set of problems to manage. I had a completely sleepless night last night because of a major cock-up that should not have happened and that seems impossible to resolve. I am taking some time out today to collect together the pieces of my brain that appear to have scattered themselves all over the place. Till tomorrow!

Empty Head For Drawing

I have been writing so many songs: it has been the year of the song. As well as collaborating with Robert Rotifer and with The Desperado Housewives, I've written with Kenji, Michel (both lovely songs that will remain hidden for a while until the other two collaborators are ready), George Barker (ha! just wait till you hear that one!), Jem Price from Asbo Derek, and Shola has just been in touch to say she is using the song Fog that I helped her to finish in a film pilot she has made in LA. Every week we do song circle: Katy, Rowen, Nadya and me, each of us with a song completed ready for Friday the effort of which is pushing us to the limits of our creativity. 

I've learned to record (almost) radio friendly quality songs on my home computer, and to speak many different song languages, both technical and emotional.

I've been teaching song writing, pulling song writing practice to bits and putting it back together again and hoping the students hiding behind the neutral initialled discs on Microsoft Teams at least have some understanding of what I'm on about. 

My guitar is like a third arm just there with the other two, and ready to be commanded into action.

One day, I'll return to the call of drawing. I have had such a good idea, and I've tried to draw it, but really it's a film, an animation of a macabre children's ritual that will literally last 15 seconds. I can't animate for toffee: I've been doing the same embroidery and photographing it for animation for more than ten years. I know animation's slow, but that's positively glacial. So the poor sad children's nursery rhyme will never see the light of day: or rather, the dark of night.

All of my creativity seems to have poured itself into music. Maybe the type of grief that's around every corner at the moment is assuaged more by music than by visual art. Almost everyone that I know has lost someone this year. Some people want to talk about it, some don't, but the noise of the loss is deafening, regardless of which of those two avenues they choose.

Last Dash To The Charity Shop

While other shoppers were sensibly (or stupidly) fleecing the supermarket shelves of their toilet roll multipacks, my sense of urgency took me to the local charity shops.

I bought three books by the same crime author. I already made a mistake a few weeks ago and sent a pile of too-violent books back from whence they came, so I'm hoping I haven't made the same mistake again. Two nice, colourful, huge old painted plates followed them, four tiny ancient books about ballets and plays (Christmas stockings) and a striped dress, midi length for cold lecture days.

On the way out of the second shop, the handles of the carrier bag gave way and everything went crashing to the floor. Miraculously, the plates are still in one piece. 

I may have made totally impractical shopping choices just pre-lockdown, but it was a damn sight more fun than trawling for a lockdown tissue hoard.

Online Teaching

I lie awake at night trying to devise ways of making online lecturing as interesting as possible for the students.

I'm going to try something out today and I'll let you know if it works!

The Trainspotters

 

Two very excited and hectic young men bustled ahead of me at the station, crashing through metal gates on to the non-functioning platform (I'd always assumed that those gates were locked).

At first I though they must be railway employees, but their behaviour was quite volatile. They were so excited! 

A train shot towards us on the middle line. The tallest of the two clenched his fist and moved his elbow rhythmically downwards making a frantic pulling motion, up and down. The train driver duly hooted his horn, and the two young men shouted in delight.

Soon, the tallest of the two was on the phone, where a third person was being treated to a live feed of the excitement. Every train that passed through was greeted by the same gesticulation: frantic, frantic, pulling down of the clenched fist, and then cheers and leaps when the drivers responded by tooting. Closer to the edge of the platform they moved, and their disappointment when they weren't acknowledged flooded across the tracks to us who were waiting for our through train. 

We were with them: the anticipation of the hoot, the thrill, the disappointment. 

'Are you all right?' shouted a fellow traveller across the rails to them. 'We are train spying!' shouted the tall chap back.

'We got three!!!' he yelled into his crackling phone, 'Better than Alexandra Palace and there's no-one here to tell us off!!'.